Communication Channels are everywhere!!

So many damn communication channels.

There is so much information coming from so many places. It is getting harder to keep track of the information at work and balance it with our daily life and the information we need to do our own thing.

I am doing the whole renewal of my passport, visa, and medical information while abroad. It is a sea of forms, communication and hurdles to climb over, and I know I will get through it. However, when the workday is all about running around and catching the information flow from the various channels, the idea of dragging my ass through form filling in the evening is not exactly energising.

I will force myself to get through the personal forms because I have to, and it is highly important to me. Still, the information flow at work, like many other companies, is a frigging mess.

Work was centred around email, and you could logically follow the trail to see who did what and why – this made sense to me, but maybe it was slow, and something should have changed.

I guess that change has happened. It is just that it has splintered into many different forms, and the accountability has been reduced. The effort in tracking the conversation threads has been dramatically increased. I don’t think the advantage of productivity from this new process has been gained. Although the speed of communication has increased, the volume and complexity mean the management of all of it has snatched back any perceived time gains.

Now, in this new normal, it is communications constantly firing towards you. Everything from everywhere. And it all has a distinct feeling that the senders are considering the action done, completed, because they off-loaded it as quickly as possible into the communication pit.

The feeling of productivity is what we have achieved, not an actual improvement in productivity. We can email, text, WeChat, slack etc., wherever we are to whoever and whenever we want.

It is all a bit broken, in my humble opinion.

The most significant indicator for me was when someone standing right next to me texted me a question…

I looked at her, and I thought, ARE YOU F*CKING FOR REAL?

And then I texted back my response…

In capitals.

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